Looking for Jake Read Free

what’s being asked of me.
    I took the tube to Willesden.
    I wince to think of it now, I jerk my mind away. I wasn’t to know. It was safer then, anyway, in those early days.
    I’ve crept into the underground stations in the months since, to check the whispered rumours for myself. I’ve seen the trains go by with the howling faces in all the windows, too fast to see clearly, something like dogs, I’ve seen trains burning with cold light, long slow trains empty except for one dead-looking woman staring directly into my eyes, en route Jesus Christ knows where.
    It was nothing like that back then, not nearly so dramatic. It was too cold and too quiet, I remember. And I am not sure the train had a driver. But it let me go. I came to Willesden and as I stepped out onto that uncovered station I could feel something different about the world. There was a very slow epiphany building up under the skin of the night, oozing out of the city’s pores, breaking over me ponderously.
    I climbed the stairs out of that underworld.
    When Orpheus looked back, Jake, it wasn’t stupid. The myths are slanderous. It wasn’t the sudden fear that she wasn’t there that turned his head. It was the threatening light from above. What if it was not the same, out there? It’s so human, to turn and catch the eye of your companion on a return journey, to share a moment’s terror that everything you know will have changed.
    There was no one I could look back to, and everything I knew had changed. Pushing open the doors onto the street was the bravest thing I have ever done.
    I stood on the high railway bridge. I was hit by wind. Across the street before me, emerging from below the bridge, below my feet, the elegant curved gorge containing the tracks stretched away. Steep banks of scrub contained it, squat bushes and weeds that tugged petulantly at the scree.
    There was very little sound. I could see only a few stars. I felt as if the whole sky scudded above me.
    The shop was dark but the door opened. It was a relief to walk into still air.
    We’re fucking shut, somebody said. He sounded despairing.
    I wound between the piles of strong-smelling books towards the till. I could see shapes and shades in this halfhearted darkness. An old bald man was slumped on a stool behind the desk.
    I don’t want to buy anything, I said. I’m looking for someone. I described you.
    Look around, mate, he said. Fucking empty. What do you want from me? I ain’t seen your friend or no one.
    Very fast, I felt hysteria. I swallowed back a desire to run to all the corners of the shop and throw piles of books around, shouting your name, to see where you were hiding. As I fought to speak the old man took some kind of contemptuous pity on me and sighed.
    One like the one you said, he’s been drifting in and out of here all day. Last here about two hours ago. If he comes in again he can fuck off, I’m closed.
    How do you tell the incredible? It seems odd, what strikes us as unbelievable.
    I had learnt, very fast, that the rules of the city had imploded, that sense had broken down, that London was a broken and bloodied thing. I accepted that with numbness, only a very little astonished. But I was nearly sick with disbelief and relief to walk out of that shop and see you waiting.
    You stood under the eaves of a newsagent’s, half in shadow, an unmistakable silhouette.
    If I stop for a moment it is all so prosaic, so obvious, that you would wait for me there. When I saw you, though, it was like a miracle.
    Did you shudder with relief to see me?
    Could you believe your eyes?
    It’s difficult to remember that, right now, when I am up here on the roof surrounded by the hungry flapping things that I cannot see, without you.
    We met in the darkness that dripped off the front of the building’s facade. I hugged you tight.
    Man . . . I said.
    Hey, you said.
    We stood like fools, silent for a while.
    Do you understand